


I'll Show You In Spring

by Etherea



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Cats, Crowley is Good With Kids (Good Omens), Crowley to the Rescue (Good Omens), M/M, Protective Crowley, Soft Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:13:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24451162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etherea/pseuds/Etherea
Summary: Crowley was sprawled on his side, limbs splayed much as they were when he lay on a floor in human form. He was naked, which was not unusual. He was also a cat, which was.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 60





	I'll Show You In Spring

Aziraphale sighed expansively. "You would think that, by now, I would have learned to knock."

Of all the sights inflicted on him, from which he would surely have been protected without the unholy influence of his... _associate..._ this was certainly a new one.   
  
Crowley was sprawled on his side, limbs splayed much as they were when he lay on a floor in human form. He was naked, which was not unusual. He was also a cat, which was. And Aziraphale had certainly never seem him lactate before. Newness abounds.   
  
He did, on balance, make quite a handsome cat. The sunbeam in which he lay coaxed glowing russet undertones from his shiny black coat, and limned with saintly haloes the three tiny kittens who suckled at his teats.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Cat-Crowley began, “and they were too small.”

Aziraphale raised a pale brow. “My dear, if you know what I am going to say I urge you to share your knowledge. because I haven’t the faintest clue. _What_ was too small?”

“...the kittens. They were too small.”

“Too small for what, precisely?”

Cat-Crowley’s muzzle trembled. “For anyone else to help.”

* * *

As it turned out, Aziraphale would _not_ have suggested the kittens go to another place to be cared for, not after hearing the details of their first few days on earth. Crowley, who shifted back to his human shape after the kittens were safely back in the warmth of his tropical plant room, haltingly described finding the dead cat in the road. Her anxious ghost twining insistently around his ankles. Being led to her den. The three warm but trembling bodies, and the cold one that was beyond his ability to help. The face of the vets he had tried to take them to, explaining how much work it was to keep neonatal kittens bottle fed and warm, and how overwhelmed rescues were in the spring. Crowley glared out into the amber light of the sunset as though urging the sun to hurry up and let night fall, to stop beaming this undeserved warmth onto him. Presently, it did, and if it happened unnaturally fast then it served the sun right for making him feel so bloody exposed. Vulnerable, like he was still on his side exposing his underbelly and three fresh new sources of potential pain. 

“It’s not like I’m doing anything _good_ ,” Crowley insisted. “The feral cat population in London is appalling.” 

“Oh, I’m quite aware.”

“They kill birds. I’m contributing to wildlife decline. Very evil.”

“Mmmm.”

“And they’re not staying here.”

“No, I wouldn’t expect so.”

* * *

A week later, Aziraphale brought a fourth kitten to Crowley. He’d just happened to be passing by the vet the evening prior, you see, as someone lay a box at their door and fled. It was pouring dreadfully and the cardboard was surely going to give way before the vet opened in the morning. There was simply nothing for it but to take the poor wee beast - all creatures great and small, yes? - and, well, if Crowley’s interventions led to a sum total that leaned more evil than good, that was hardly the fault of the messenger. Courier. Kitten-transporter. Was it?

Crowley said nothing, but grew a fourth nipple. Aziraphale took this as assent.

* * *

Kittens came and went. Crowley put them outside once they were fully weaned and taught an appropriate variety of biting and clawing attacks. He shut the door and did not hear any lilting-voiced passer-by greet and collect each animal. He drove faster than usual, which was quite an achievement, whenever his route took him past the bookshop. At that speed it was impossible to see inside the front window, where he most certainly had not observed kittens frolicking upon the piles of books. He definitely hadn’t seen the one who climbed into the clean teacup and rested its front paws on the edge. What a tremendous arsehole of a kitten that one must have been, he didn’t ponder. Nor did any of this make him smile in any way whatsoever. At all. 

* * *

“What on _earth_ are you doing looking like _that?”_

Crowley swore in cat. Not overly verbal amongst their own kind, cats had developed an extensive language purely in order to interact with humans. It delighted him to know that a full half of their trills and meows were curses, and that humans - and hopefully his sudden uninvited guest Hastur, at whom his own feral purrs were now directed - were completed oblivious to this. He leapt down from the windowsill and strolled around Hastur, holding his gaze and turning him away from the room where the current crop of kittens snoozed. milk-drunk, beneath the orchid wall. 

“It’s called a cat, Hastur.” he drawled with a roll of his eyes. The effect was unparalleled. Mortal cats couldn’t quite achieve this, and if the frog-skulled interloper hadn’t already been enraged, he was now. 

“A _pet?!”_ Hastur spat. “A _domestic_ . _Kept. Tame. Pet.”_ _  
_ “You do know, don’t you, that when you emphasise every word it sort of muddles the impact?”   
“I’m going to have to report this, Crowley.”

“Report what, precisely?” snorted Cat-Crowley, affecting an air of disdain that he hoped hid his leaping heartbeat. “Cats are bastards. I’ll get another commendation. Ooh, that’d be nice. I’ve a gap on that wall.” He gestured with his tail to what appeared to be a tiled wall, but was in fact an aesthetically pleasing arrangement of his demonic achievement honours. Indeed there was a gap, on the upper right. “I’m hoping for a shield-shaped one, maybe in bronze. Haven’t got one of those yet. Have you?” 

Hastur pointedly did not reply to this. He had received one award, back in the 1960s, for killing an important biologist with the venomous frogs he was studying. The man could have saved the Amazon, had he survived. What was left of the forest now was burning. The frogs were extinct. The commendation had been a piece of paper, unframed, and Crowley knew all this. Hastur stared as Cat-Crowley flopped over in the sunbeam. He reached down towards the velveteen belly without quite knowing why, and with a shriek pulled his hand back quite badly lacerated. 

“What the heaven, you pest!”  
“I told you, Kermit, cats are bastards.”

“Are the nipples necessary? Seven nipples? That most holy of numbers?”  
“Seven, one for each _deadly sin,_ you numpty, _honestly._ I can’t believe you call yourself a demon when you don’t see a sin-nippled bastard cat for the absolutely unholy form it is. When’s the last time you grew a nipple for a sin? Vice? Indictable offence?. Can I report _you_ for being unforgivably dense and boring?” 

Hastur disappeared with a croaking shout of rage, and puff of air that reeked of salmonella. Crowley let go of his cat shape with a relieved groan, and went to pour himself a pint of whiskey. 

* * *

“They need to be on neutral ground. The knobheads downstairs won’t pop in here, and your lot won’t give two shits.” Crowley swigged from his teacup, ignoring that such an act should be physically impossible, and wore an expression that in a less fiendish being might be called a pout. 

“All creatures, yes yes. It’s fine, honestly. They go like hotcakes, and they distract people from the books.” Aziraphale tried not to frown as he miracled away a small puddle of kitten wee from under his left shoe. “Perfectly fine.”

“This might have to be the last lot. I’m not sure I can explain it if they find out the details. They're a bit behind the times when it comes to my sort of evil.” 

“Ah, well. I shall miss the little darlings.”

Crowley fiddled with his saucer. “I sold one of the new orchids I bred.”

“Oh, what was the occasion?”

“...funded a neonate kitten room for the RSPCA. Signed the royalties over to them.”

Crowley stared so intently at his teacup, determined not to feel anything at all about these events, that when he _did_ feel a hand beneath his chin tilting his face up towards his angel’s, he was thoroughly wide eyed and felt as vulnerable as he had been nips up on the floor at Hastur’s feet. A suitable enough expression to wear as gentle, holy lips pressed against his own. 

“And to think I call myself the soft one,” Aziraphale breathed against his mouth, and nuzzled his face in an unmistakably cat-like gesture. Crowley turned the most delightful shade of pink, clashing terribly with his own hair. The angel rucked up the crisp black shirt and ran a hand over the soft, sparse hair of Crowley’s belly. The hiss and sharp-nailed grasp Aziraphale received in return seemed to only spur him on.

“Oh you incorrigible sweetheart. I know you love a belly rub.”

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Title from [The Lovecats by The Cure.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejQDaZw1iqw)
> 
> For AK in "Is this Good Omens? No? Too bad, it is now." And all you other softies.


End file.
